Artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who work as NEVERCREW, have a knack for bringing the immensity of nature to developed urban spaces. Their colorful, large-scale murals take a playful tack when it comes to portraying animals, often merging them with other objects such as instant photos or, most recently, a plastic punch-out toy. “Souvenir,” completed this year in Vienna, combines motifs of a large bear with other Arctic components, such as icebergs, a seabird, and a steamship.

“The natural environment appears transformed, filtered, made artificial: it is no longer a space experienced through relationship, but a distant construction,” the artists say in a statement. The work is “almost a simulation reflecting a perception of nature progressively emptied of empathy…Nature becomes something to observe, arrange, organize, as if it were a separate object rather than a system of which we are an integral part.”

Detail of “Bracketing”

Over the past few years, NEVERCREW has completed numerous architectonic paintings that depict the fragile balance between humanity and nature—specifically wildlife. Whales, bears, and elephants are depicted inside of terrariums or bundled into fabrics.

The animals’ very presence on the side of buildings, where they are contained within the bounds of the architecture, is a reminder of the tensions between—one might even say the incongruousness of—daily human activities and city infrastructure. For Rebbechi and Togni, bringing nature into these spaces highlights the importance of sustaining the relationship between humankind and nature.

See more on the artists’ Instagram.

“Bracketing” (2021), diptych, Jarville-la-Malgrange, Nancy, France. Curated by LeMur Nancy Detail of “Bracketing” Detail of “Bracketing” “Gravity” (2021), Le Locle, Switzerland, for Exomusée “Switch” (2024), Wuppertal, Germany, for Urbaner Kunstraum Wuppertal, curated by Valentina Maoilov Detail of “Switch” Detail of “Switch” “Wire” (2023), Paradiso, Switzerland. Organized and curated by Freefox Architecture Studio Detail of “Souvenir” Detail of “Souvenir”